The Picture in the House

"The Picture in the House" is a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. It was written on December 12, 1920, and first published in the July issue of The National Amateur—which was published in the summer of 1921. While riding on his bicycle in the Miskatonic Valley of rural New England, a genealogist seeks shelter from an approaching storm in an apparently abandoned house, only to find that it is occupied by a "loathsome old, white-bearded, and ragged man," speaking in "an extreme form of Yankee dialect...thought long extinct." The narrator notices that the house is full of antique books, exotic artifacts, and furniture predating the American Revolution. The old man is apparently harmless and ignorant, but shows a disquieting fascination for an engraving in a rare old book, Regnum Congo, and admits to the narrator that it made him hunger for "victuals I couldn't raise nor buy"- presumably human flesh.